WILLIAM PRESTON JOHNSTON, /WEMORIAL SERVICE IN HONOR OF William Preston Johnston, LLD. FIRST PRESIDENT OP TULANE UNIVERSITY. 1884-1899 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS BY JUDGE CHARLES E. EEININER iWE/nORIAL ORATIOIN BY B. M. PALMER. D. D. IN MEMORIAM. T^HE audience being assembled in Tulane Hall on the evening of December 20th, 1899, the services were opened by the Rt. Rev. Davis Sessums, D. D., who offered the following PRAYER: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. O God, the Sovereign Lord and King, who hast given unto men the administration of government upon earth, we make our supplications unto Thee, for all those who have that trust committed to their hands. Enable them, we pray Thee, to fulfil the same to Thy honor and the welfare of the nations among whom they rule. Especially we implore Thy favor on Thy servants, the President of the United States, the Governor of this State, and all who have the making or executing of law in the land. Endue them with uprightness and wisdom, with firmness and clemency, remembering whose ministers they are, and the account which they must render at Thy throne. To the people of all ranks and conditions among us, give the spirit of obedience to government, and of contentment under its protection, in leading peaceable and honest lives. Let the righteousness prevail which exalteth a nation, and throughout our land let the name of Thy Son be acknowledged as King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, to Thy honor and glory, who art God over all, blessed for evermore. Amen. Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, we be- seech Thee, regard with Thy favor and visit with Thy blessing the colleges and schools in our land, and especially that insti- tution whose representatives are here assembled. Assist all who are guardians of their interests, and secure to them the means of their usefulness. Endue all those who are teachers with a serious sense of their charge, and wisdom and strength for its fulfilment. Teach the students, we pray Thee, to choose their path so as to keep it according to Thy word. Inspire them with high hopes and worthy purposes, and so prepare them to fulfil their course with honor, that they may attain the glorious to Thou dost call them in the life to come destiny which ; through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of those who depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the spirits of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burdens of the are in and we Thee thanks for flesh; joy felicity ; give hearty the good examples of all those Thy servants, who having finished their course in faith, do now rest from their labors— and especially for the good example of Him whose life we now commemorate. And we beseech Thee, that we, with all those who are departed in the true faith of Thy Holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in Thy eternal and Christ our everlasting glory ; through Jesus Lord. Amen. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all ever- more. Amen. Hon. Charles B. Fenner, President of the Board of Ad- ministrators, then made the following introductory address: Gentlemen of Tulane University of Louisiana*. The Faculty of all the departments of Tulane, the stu- dents in all of its various branches, together with this large and representative audience, have assembled here to-night to pay a feeble tribute to the memory of William. Preston Johnston, the first President of the University. His life was adorned by every public and private virtue, and by various and illustrious achievements in many branches. As a patriot, as a scholar, as a man of Letters, as a poet, as a soldier and as a Christian, his whole life was devoted to the building up of a character wanting no element calculated to attract the love and admira- tion of his fellows. And this life he had the pleasure of crowning by the successful performance of that task to which its later were devoted the of this years ; building up great University, in the annals of which his name, as its first Presi- dent, will always be associated with those of Paul Tulane an4 Randall Lee Gibson, the latter the first President of the Board of Administrators. He was my friend from my early youth to the very mo- ment of his death, and in that death life lost for me, as for many, many others, a charm which nothing can ever replace. If I should attempt to speak of him as 1 feel, my feeble tongue would fail to find words in which to voice the sentiments of love and admiration which my heart has ever felt for him. But that pleasure has been confided to a far abler one than my- self. I well remember that at the grand anti-lottery meeting, which was held in the Grand Opera House at the inauguration of that memorable campaign, the presiding officer, who was Col. Johnston, in introducing to that audience the great orato* to whom you are to listen to-night, spoke of him as *'the most illustrious citizen of Louisiana," and I feel that all of you will join with me in paying the same tribute to him, whose virtues as a citizen, whose eminence as a Christian, whose erudition as a scholar, and whose eloquence as an orator, have made his name one of the brightest in our State, and it is with pleasure that I now present to you the Rev. Dr. B. M. Palmer. Dr. Palmer then delivered the following MEMORIAL ORATION. Mr. (President and Gentlemen of the (Board of Administration; Members of the Faculty of the Various ^Departments of Tulane upon this platform; Students of the several Col' leges, professional and academic; Fellow-Citizens of JVew Orleans: Tulane University institutes to-night her third Lodge of Sorrow. The first was upon the occasion of the death of Mr. Paul Tulane, the benefactor and, within certain limits, the founder as well of this University; a man who came from abroad, amassed in this city his wealth, and, having bound the himself by no family ties, was pleased at the last to make people of Louisiana, and the citizens of New Orleans espec- the death of the ially, his heirs. The second occasion was on first President of the Board of Administration, General Ran- dall L. Gibson, the gallant soldier and wise Senator, bound in close association with others in devising this bequest of Mr. Tulane, and whose guiding hand did so much for the institu- tion which, in the providence of God, he was permitted to live only just long enough to see emerge from its condition of chrysalis into the full proportions of an expanded University. To-night we gather around the tomb of the first President of the University itself, William. Preston Johnston, LX. D. Col. Johnston was born in 1831, and traced his origin back to a noble stock. It is vain to pour contempt upon the pride which traces one's history back to a noble heritage. It adds grace to virtue when it descends from sire to son, "And is successively, from blood to blood, The right of birth." It is a just ambition which inspires men in their several gen* erations, ' 'To draw forth a noble ancestry From the corruption of abusing time, Unto a lineal, true-derived course." The family history of the Johnstons emerges first into light in the person of Captain Archibald Johnston, of Salis- bury, Connecticut, who, from a document bearing the date of 1 77 1) was evidently born in a little strip of territory called Oblong, just between tbe borders of New York on the one side and Connecticut on the other. In 1775 he was commis- sioned as a captain in the Revolutionary army of patriots, and fought throughout the entire American war, dying at last in 1 789. He is described as a large landholder and a man of ex- tensive influence, being a leader of men in his generation. Bold and in without concealment daring character, frank, ; pos- sessing all the hereditary traits of his Scotch descent, from a family which at an earlier colonial period had settled in Duch- ess county, New York. His son, John Johnston, the second link in this line of descent, after graduation at Yale, studied medicine at Litchfield, Connecticut, and became, in his day, an eminent practitioner. He settled later in the State of Ken- tucky, which thenceforward became the domicile of the John- stons. He inherited all the qualities of his Scotch birth—a people, as you all know, famed in history for the strength of their convictions and the determination of their will rugged ; who like the massive mountains of their own have and, country , endured through centuries of tempest and storm. He is rep- resented as frank, even to bluntness, and was a conspicuous leader in his He was twice married first in the age. ; family of the Stoddards, and, at a later period, contracting marriage with a Miss Abigail Harris, daughter of a certain Edward Harris, who had the reputation in his day of being an exceed- ingly pious Puritan.